We Won the War -- We Have Lost the Peace

Mission Accomplished? Yes, actually.

It's been 50 months since the infamous photo-op, codpiece and macho rhetoric from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and history has seen that moment turn from a shining image of Neocon triumph into a running joke and haunting symbol of Bushie bravado and incompetence. Countless cartoons and commentaries have skewered the stunt, while modern-day-Murrow, Keith Olberman, signs off each Countdown broadcast with a count-up of days since the ill-fated proclamation.

Are these endless liberal lampoons fair? Do they rally support or cast the party as a vulture more interested in picking at a corpse than setting things right?

The more accurate and embraceable way to decry the handling of Iraq is to clearly lay full blame where it belongs: at the foot of the architects of a post-Saddam Iraq. Get your bumper stickers. Circulate the talking points. Get all candidates on message. Repeat after me:

"WE WON THE WAR -- WE HAVE LOST THE PEACE."

Read on for further analysis of the best use of "Mission Acomplished" and how minds can be changed through the strength of syntax...

I have little but contempt for this administration and its handling of Iraq, and I resent the politicization of that fateful "Mission Accomplished" day: the carrier was ordered to turn around so that San Diego would not be seen in the background, the Prez flew in on a jet though the ship was in copter range of the shore, cameras were rolling for campaign ads, Bushie politicos brought the legendary banner (and initially lied in claiming that sailors had strung it up). Yet the fact remains that the banner was correct; the MILITARY's mission was accomplished by May of 2003 and major combat operations were completed by that time. Patrolling a street, guarding a market or clearing a building are not major combat operations -- not the tasks of a standing army.

Similarly, nation-building is not a job for the armed forces.

Liberal pundits delight in deflating the Mission Accomplished bravado, but in their haste to wittily deride Dubya they miss the point of that day and the effect of their barbs. With a vacancy sign on the Oval Office, Democrats need to stop shooting themselves in the foot by insisting that the U.S. has "lost the war". I'm looking at you, Senator Reid. WE WON THE WAR -- we amazingly disassembled one of the globe's larger armies and toppled a regional power in a matter of WEEKS with a display of strategy, technology, and might that was magnificent in its execution, even if immoral/illegal in its Genesis.

It is our civics, our reconstruction, our management and our diplomacy that have been a miserable failure.

WE WON THE WAR -- WE HAVE LOST THE PEACE.

This may be a semantical difference -- but until more of our populace learns to think for itself, semantics will comprise the dark crevices in which self-serving manipulators take purchase. If you covet the West Wing, oh Democratic party, you will stop declaring that the U.S. has "lost the war", because this muddles the debate and allows Republicans to exploit an American spirit that will not accept "loss" or "surrender" or "retreat" or perceived insults to our troops.

For years the Right has demonstrated the value of well-chosen words. By inventing and employing terms like "Death Tax" (estate tax), "Partial Birth Abortion" (surgical extraction), "Alternate Energy Exploration" (drilling), "Clean Air Bill" (providing emission licenses), "Free Speech Zones" (restricted protest areas), "Healthy Forest Initiative" (logging), and "Climate Change" (global warming), Republicans have won the hearts and votes of constituents who actually cast ballots against their own interests and beliefs. As conservative strategist Frank Luntz observes, "It's not what you say, it's what people hear."

Democrats should not embrace this same path of dishonest manipulation, but they should choose their words more carefully and express their positions more accurately. They can start with the dialog on Iraq...stop suggesting that the nation has been defeated in a military action and remind them that civilian incompetence is to blame for the subsequent mess.

WE WON THE WAR, and have botched everything since.

The men and women on that carrier deserved a salute -- the armed forces accomplished their mission and should have been allowed to largely stand-down thereafter...but the Neocons with their shiny explosive toys and indifference to the blood of others didn't think past the tumbling of Saddam's statue (and ignored those who had). The mission of civilian leaders is to maintain a semblance of stability in that country and it is THEY who have failed (See books such as Fiasco, Assassin's Gate, COBRA II, Imperial Life in the Emerald City). Those who have failed remain ensconced in comfy D.C. offices, while those who succeeded sweat it out in a deadly maze of sand-covered IEDs.

I warn you Democrats, do not play into this trap. Embrace that banner and its real implications. Do not declare a WAR lost, for we have not been in a WAR in years. The military's mission was accomplished...the government's mission is in a state of failure.

Threat From Without...or Within?

Who presents a greater threat to American society - international terrorists, or the current caretakers of the federal government?

The recent United Kingdom bombing buffoonery provided further evidence that the rhetorical bark of the global jihad may be worse than its operational ability to bite. Conversely, President Bush's liberation of Scooter Libby confirmed that there are no legal or ethical boundaries that this administration will not cross to satisfy its own ends.

Is the War on Terror more dangerous than the terrorists? Is Al Qaeda merely a straw man cast as a formidable foe in order to cow the masses and keep neo-cons in power?

With the Keystone Cops of Al-Qaeda embarrassing themselves in the UK and President Bush's commutation of Scooter's sentence embarrassing us all, this was a revealing week in the "War on Terror". This combination of operational incompetence and administrative injustice demonstrated the limited physical menace presented by terrorists and the very real corrosive threat to our way of life engendered by the specter of "terror" and effected by those who claim to protect us.

In short: we are a greater danger to ourselves than they are.

The threat of extremists should not be taken lightly, and vigilance against violence is important...but constant fear of the catastrophic is neither productive nor warranted. The airborne attacks of 9/11 represented an anomaly amongst terrorist attacks, not the norm. Years in the making, exorbitantly financed, meticulously planned and rehearsed in plain sight of a naive nation, September 11th was a horrific masterpiece, a unique stroke of monstrous genius. Yet despite fear-inducing campaign slogans to the contrary, that day was not the harbinger of a new world order or an indicator of the everyday capabilities of this far-flung band of misled Muslim malcontents.

Prior to 9/11, foreign-born terrorists had managed only one assault on U.S. soil, an attack that tried to tumble a building, but primarily damaged a parking lot. Their calculations of destruction were as amiss as their escape plan: the conspirators were arrested when they sought to claim the deposit on the rental van they had detonated. Since 9/11, their forces have produced several menacing low-grade videotapes, but have shed no blood in America. Major homeland security arrests have featured:

• a fanciful group in Florida with comic book dreams but no connections/money/munitions;
• a NJ group with a trunk full of shotguns planning to assault an army base, led by a pizza driver who had delivered pies to the barracks (the group was busted after bringing a homemade training film to a local video store for replication);
• a NY cell that envisioned blowing up gas tanks on the edge of an airport (despite initial hysterical reporting, sounder technical information revealed that the ensuing conflagration would have been limited to a fireball on the edge of an empty tarmac and not have caused any damage to the snaking subterranean pipeline that fed it);
• a hapless "sole" on a transatlantic flight furiously trying to set fire to his laces, hoping to detonate the explosives in his shoes.

Not exactly an intimidating gallery of rogues.

When a slap hitter in baseball defies the odds to belt a dramatic home run, he is not forever after feared as a slugger. He is not defended differently, he is not moved up in the lineup, he is not intentionally walked. He is regarded exactly for what he is -- a weakling who had an unexpected moment of glory. Just ask Bucky Dent.

Perhaps Al-Qaeda is not much different.

For more examples, look no further than this past week's "attacks" in the UK. Continuing the baseball analogy: strike one, strike two, strike three, they're out. Three separate car bombs were dispatched in London and Glasgow...one had a cell phone trigger that failed to go off (and provided investigators a clear path back to the plotters via caller ID), another was towed away without incident for illegal parking, and the third found two would-be terrorists incinerating only themselves as they bumped a flaming SUV into the front of an airport (why do they hate air travel so?).

Undoubtedly there remains potential for another large operation. So long as Al-Qaeda has well-heeled supporters, ingenious planners, fanatical operatives, and a black market of "loose nukes," we must be cautious and on-guard. However, a nation of 300 million citizens covering 3.5 million square miles possessing global influence, a GDP of $13 trillion and a legacy of personal freedom spanning 2 centuries should not bend its ideals or over-expend its blood, treasure and sensibility to defend against a few thousand semi-literate vagabonds.

Yet those who derive power from public fear preach paranoia over pragmatism and reject such practical analysis.

Rudy Giuliani declares that such a realistic assessment of the terrorists' capabilities invites further attack and represents a "pre-9/11 mindset" (a mindset that he abhors, because on September 10, 2001 he was an unpopular and outgoing local official). Senator Joe Lieberman actually seized upon this burning Scottish auto as justification to end legislative debate on domestic wire-tapping and to give our federal government a blank check for invasive police powers. "Bill of Rights be damned -- we must insure that such smoke damage never occurs at LaGuardia Airport!!!"

Yet it was the President's personal intervention and liberation of I. Lewis Libby that truly revealed the neo-conservative strategic hypocrisy and showed that we are wreaking far greater havoc upon ourselves in the name of terror than any jihadist has dared dream to accomplish.

Since the towers' collapse, this administration has sacrificed 3,500 American soldiers and 70,000 Iraqi civilians, tortured innocents at Abu Ghraib, stripped human rights in Guantanamo Bay and violated the civil rights of its own citizens for the fight against terror. It used Tenet's lies to legitimize an invasion, then gave him a Medal of Freedom. It used Libby's lies to cover up the falsehoods, and gave him a free pass from a criminal sentence for his efforts. All of this was done in the name of a war that has no clear logistical targets, only idyllic conceptual goals (peace, human rights, rule of law, freedom, democracy).

These same idyllic concepts were betrayed by the Libby commutation, which cast doubt on what this President-of-principle stands for, showed that all men are not created equal, disrupted the rule of law, and reinforced the perception that deception and disregard for the truth will be rewarded when committed in the service of this administration.

George Walker Bush is a man who put mentally-challenged inmates to death in Texas, but deemed Scooter's sentence too harsh. A man who proclaims that "activist judges" are dangerous and have no right to substitute their opinions for the letter of the law, but circumvented the judicial process based upon his own notion of fairness. A man who keeps hundreds of souls in Cuban cages without ever presenting evidence of guilt, but said that Scooter should be freed because the sentence was, "based in part on allegations never presented to the jury." A man who vowed to bring accountability to the Oval Office, but wields his power to absolve those who prevaricate to protect his executive branch. A man who asks his citizens to sacrifice their children's youth and blood during extended tours in a faraway land, but cannot bear to think of Scooter confined to a country club facility for a single day.

This commutation is a blatant and shameless affront to us all -- not because one replaceable crony will avoid jail time, but because the brazen and indefensible act is emblematic of this administration's hubris and fraudulent guile, which has never been laid so bare.

This White House doesn't care about you -- not as a citizen or a voter or a jurist or an ally. It doesn't care about right or wrong, justice, peace, freedom, law, democracy. These are buzzwords to obfuscate motive and placate dissent. Though at this point, it appears that this White House doesn't even care about saving face. It cares only about itself, its power, and its own ends, which justify any means.

Al Qaeda brought down the World Trade Center, and those towers may indeed have been the first two dominoes leading to the fall of freedom as we know it...but perhaps the most formidable threat to our way of life is not the bevy of failed plots hatched by a rabble of rebellious cave-dwellers. The source of our demise may instead be those who would exploit our fear to further their agendas and pervert our system to protect their own.

Flaming cars will never bring down a republic, betrayal of our values just might.